Growing up my education was a lot about putting words together in a logical form. I was writing a lot for exams, exams, exams, and assignments. I had to quote the big philosophers for my college entrance exam without having internalized what they actually meant. Even then I followed the rules of writing, conjured sentences seemingly akin to professional literature, and was able to pass the exam somehow. My frame of reference was newspapers I was reading every day.
For the next phase of my education I had to do the same in another language — English — and found myself working through the challenge in the same manner: though I wasn’t fully internalizing everything that I was putting together, I was composing something that made sense, by mimicking the literatures I was reading every day.
After graduation and over the last decade, I worked in different sectors, organizations, countries, roles and in each and every position and environment went through an excruciatingly painful process of learning.
Regardless of the actual language that I was operating in, it felt like I had to learn something ‘foreign’ every time, as people referred to different terminologies and communicated in different styles. It was almost as if each of those environments as a whole was a foreign world where you needed to learn the A, B, Cs and eventually acquire the fluency for communication, which was the essence for survival and adaptation.
If an organization is a microcosm of a society, the rules of the game for effective adaptation seem comparable: mimic the language of the society, which entails finding the frame of reference and putting the A, B, Cs together in accordance with that.
Once I was thrown into a completely foreign role where I felt like I did not understand a thing that people were discussing. Applying the aforementioned method, I started with listening extremely attentively and focused on capturing the keywords in the spoken and written narratives. I then connected my thoughts around those concepts and eventually tried to mimic how people spoke.
The process did not require perfect fluency in the actual language itself nor a complete internalization of everything that was being communicated— rather it was about being able to speak the language required for the job by putting together the commonly used concepts as others do.
The process could also apply to acquiring a new skill — say even something as fuzzy as people management. You may first want to look up what people say it comprises — e.g. communication, training, motivating staff, performance evaluation — and build your thoughts and narratives around them as others do. With this frame of reference, application will become easier and with the practice will come refinement and eventually mastery.
Refinement and mastery and ‘excelling in the job’ will require applying your own learnings back into the initial language acquired and adapting it. But in just being able to learn fast initially and ‘do the job’, find the frame of reference and mimic the language spoken.
Would you have any tips for learning fast in a new job? Please share in comments!